Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/78

 for the future man, whose psychical faculties unquestionably develop at the expense of his animal instincts. It is hardly possible to limit our conception of the means by which thought will be communicated in the next century, but we may see just where the change will probably come. A printed essay, such as this, is obviously a successive translation of thought into words (in the brain), then of the words into letters, and then of letters into type, which is picked up by the eye, retranslated into words by one part of the brain, and finally transmuted into thought again in another part. If some method can be discovered of abolishing one or more of these processes, thought can be conveyed from brain to brain at an enormously increased pace, and with a delicacy of which we have no present conception. This development is not so inconceivable as it at first appears. We know as yet almost nothing of the processes by which (for instance) vibration, accepted by the ear as sound, is, in the brain-cells behind the ear, converted into thought. Speech and writing are purely conventional devices. If, instead of using these conventions, we can learn to transmit ideas immediately from brain to brain, the next step may be an extraordinary development of intellectual pleasures, in the case of those individuals whose tastes are capable of thus being ministered to. But to say this is not to imply